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<A NAME="BCGBGBBJN"></A><h1>About ADO.NET</h1>
<A NAME="TI551"></A><p>ADO.NET is a set of technologies that provides native access
to data in the Microsoft .NET Framework. It is designed to support
an n-tier programming environment and to handle a disconnected data
architecture. ADO.NET is tightly integrated with XML and uses a
common data representation that can combine data from disparate
sources, including XML.</p>
<A NAME="TI552"></A><p>One of the major components of ADO.NET is the .NET Framework
data provider, which connects to a database, executes commands,
and retrieves results. </p>
<A NAME="TI553"></A><p>Microsoft provides .NET Framework data providers for SQL Server
and OLE DB with the .NET Framework, and data providers for ODBC
and Oracle can be downloaded from the Microsoft Web site. You can
also obtain .NET Framework data providers from other vendors, such
as the .NET Framework Data Provider for Adaptive Server Enterprise
from Sybase.</p>
<A NAME="TI554"></A><p>To connect to a database using the PowerBuilder ADO.NET database interface,
you must use a .NET Framework data provider.</p>
<A NAME="TI555"></A><h4>Accessing Unicode data</h4>
<A NAME="TI556"></A><p>Using the ADO.NET interface, PowerBuilder can connect, save,
and retrieve data in both ANSI/DBCS and Unicode databases
but does not convert data between Unicode and ANSI/DBCS.
When character data or command text is sent to the database, PowerBuilder sends
a Unicode string. The data provider must guarantee that the data
is saved as Unicode data correctly. When PowerBuilder retrieves character
data, it assumes the data is Unicode.</p>
<A NAME="TI557"></A><p>A Unicode database is a database whose character set is set
to a Unicode format, such as UTF-8, UTF-16, UCS-2, or UCS-4. All
data must be in Unicode format, and any data saved to the database
must be converted to Unicode data implicitly or explicitly.</p>
<A NAME="TI558"></A><p>A database that uses ANSI (or DBCS) as its character set might
use special datatypes to store Unicode data. Columns with these
datatypes can store <i>only</i> Unicode data. Any
data saved into such a column must be converted to Unicode explicitly.
This conversion must be handled by the database server or client.</p>

